iPhone Cruncher

Francis Ford Coppola. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Francis Ford Coppola returned to Comic-Con International for the first time in nearly 20 years to promote his independent horror movie, “Twixt.” The director of “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now” brought a homespun presentation to the San Diego Convention Center’s 6,500-seat Hall H, singing, shuffling through random scenes of his film on an iPad and moderating his own panel by asking his leading man, Val Kilmer, to “vamp,” while he worked out some technical glitches.

“Twixt” stars Kilmer as a “bargain basement Stephen King”– as the small-town sheriff played by Bruce Dern describes him in the footage Coppola showed. Dern’s character tips Kilmer to a story of a real murdered girl, who appears in fantasy sequences as a ghost named “V” (Elle Fanning). “I’ve always loved the gothic romance story, the horror story,” Coppola said, hearkening back to his early days as an apprentice for B movie king Roger Corman.

“Why do movies have to be canned?” Coppola asked the audience, explaining that he intended the panel to be a dress rehearsal for a road show he’d like to bring the film on in advance of its release. “There’s a yearning I feel for a little bit more of the live to be put back in cinema. What I’d love to do is go on tour for a month and perform… a different version [of the film] for each audience.”

At an event where glossy studio presentations are meticulously stage managed, there was a sense of whimsical experimentation to the “Twixt” panel. Upon entering Hall H, attendees were handed a paper mask of Edgar Allan Poe — whose Gothic stories Coppola has called an influence on the film — with 3-D glasses for eyes.

“Oh my God, 6,000 Edgar Allan Poes!” Coppola said, looking out into the audience. He showed several minutes of footage, including a few scenes in 3-D. There was a comic montage of Kilmer grappling with writer’s block, ethereal shots of  Fanning’s ghost walking

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Are you a voracious romance fiction novel reader? Well now you can enjoy them anywhere, anytime via an App (iTunes Application)! MyRomanceStory.com announces the release of its library of romance graphic novels on Apple’s iTunes App Store.

“The iPhone opens up an exciting platform for readers to experience our romance novels,” says Pat White, CEO Arrow Publications, LLC, the publisher of MyRomanceStory.com. “The colors are vibrant and the text is easy to read.”

However, getting these stories up was frustrating.

At times, MyRomanceStory editors suffered the same mixed signals as their fictional heroines since they were never sure what Apple wanted. Form emails would indicate that there was a problem with the submission, but wouldn’t specify the text, image, or even the panel. As White explains, “We present stories of couples falling in love. That involves romantic and necessary intimate scenes. We spent a lot of time editing and re-editing. If only we could have spoken to someone at Apple to understand exactly what changes they wanted.”

“We were sensitive to Apple’s range of readers so we submitted edited versions targeting what we thought was a general audience,” Managing Editor, Tom King, adds. “But although we edited out some of the love scenes and text, we still got rejections.”

Once Apple launched its ratings system and got over the initial bottleneck of submissions, Arrow noticed a faster turnaround for its Apps approval.

Romance fans can go to the iTunes App Store and search by keywords “myromancestory” or “romance story” to find the Arrow titles.

(Source) Press